On Tue, 2007-03-06 at 19:08 -0500, Philip Ray Schaffner wrote:

On Tue, 2007-03-06 at 17:41 -0400, Jeff Sheltren wrote:

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On Mar 6, 2007, at 4:49 PM, Phil Schaffner wrote:

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Apparently Octave has been orphaned by the upstream for EL5 ,

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Hi Phil, if it is still in Fedora Extras, I imagine it will show up in EPEL once it is publicly available...

http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/EPEL/

Wasn't aware of EPEL. I see it says "The EPEL repository is not yet publicly available -- we are in the process of creation and initial testing phase."

Will keep an eye on it.

well, it is available. looks like a poorly updated wiki page:

http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/epel/

-sv

On Tue, 2007-03-06 at 21:34 -0500, seth vidal wrote: ...

well, it is available. looks like a poorly updated wiki page:

http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/epel/

Yes - found that. A relatively small number of packages as of yet, and no octave or octave-forge. Have been looking through the Wiki pages about processes in place for requesting packages and for how to contribute. Looks like all that is still a work in progress and a bit confusing.

Thanks, Phil

On Wed, 2007-03-07 at 09:15 -0600, Rex Dieter wrote:

Here's a few pointers: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/HelpWanted http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Extras http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Extras/Contributors

Yes - had looked at all those. I was referring to the EPEL-specific Wiki pages and epel-devel list, and specifically how to contribute to EPEL and suggest/request/help-with packages without being an Extras developer. Seemed clear that the possibility was open, but the route[s] to get there not well-defined.

Thanks, Phil

On Thu, 2007-03-08 at 06:58 -0600, Rex Dieter wrote:

Mind you, it's just getting started: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/EPEL

I think we just completed a full circle. :-)

Phil

On Thu, 2007-03-08 at 09:51 -0600, Rex Dieter wrote:

Phil Schaffner wrote:

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Yes - had looked at all those. I was referring to the EPEL-specific Wiki pages and epel-devel list, and specifically how to contribute to EPEL and suggest/request/help-with packages without being an Extras developer.

Ah, overlooked the "how to contribute... without being an Extras' developer". Short of actually maintaining packages (ie, signing cla and becoming an Extras contributor), you're limited mostly to participating on the epel lists, providing opinions, feedback (via ml or bugzilla).

-- Rex

Not that I am complaining ... but don't you think if all the CentOS Developers sign a cla and become Fedora Extras Developers that starts many questions?

I certainly don't think that the CORE CentOS developers can do that ... maybe I am wrong. I guess it depends on the cla.

On Thu, Mar 08, 2007 at 11:07:33AM -0500, seth vidal wrote:

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Not that I am complaining ... but don't you think if all the CentOS Developers sign a cla and become Fedora Extras Developers that starts many questions?

what questions does it start?

"What kind of crazy world is this in which everyone gets along and works together on a project?"

On Thu, 2007-03-08 at 10:43 -0600, Johnny Hughes wrote:

On Thu, 2007-03-08 at 11:07 -0500, seth vidal wrote:

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On Thu, 2007-03-08 at 10:04 -0600, Johnny Hughes wrote:

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On Thu, 2007-03-08 at 09:51 -0600, Rex Dieter wrote:

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Phil Schaffner wrote:

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Yes - had looked at all those. I was referring to the EPEL-specific Wiki pages and epel-devel list, and specifically how to contribute to EPEL and suggest/request/help-with packages without being an Extras developer.

Ah, overlooked the "how to contribute... without being an Extras' developer". Short of actually maintaining packages (ie, signing cla and becoming an Extras contributor), you're limited mostly to participating on the epel lists, providing opinions, feedback (via ml or bugzilla).

-- Rex

Not that I am complaining ... but don't you think if all the CentOS Developers sign a cla and become Fedora Extras Developers that starts many questions?

I certainly don't think that the CORE CentOS developers can do that ... maybe I am wrong. I guess it depends on the cla.

what questions does it start?

-sv

Hey ... is CentOS a Red Hat project, you guys are also Fedora Devels?

(That is one major question, for example)

let me ask a silly question: How does it matter? Let's say centos was a red hat project. That red hat inc had decided they wanted a rebuild of rhel for people who could not/would not pay for rhel and they wanted to have it done by people outside of red hat. How would it change the facts of the matter that centos 1. exists 2. does a bang-up job making things work well, reliably and innovating in great ways outside of the core distro?

How would those things changed if Centos was blessed by Red Hat or if it was not?

I don't think it would. No more than gcc changes b/c red hat pays some people to work on it and does not pay other folks. Nor the kernel. Centos is a community project that operates in a space left open and unfilled by any company. It's been doing a great job at providing for people who would otherwise be left out in the cold and anyone who says otherwise is completely full of crap.

so who cares if someone thinks it is a red hat blessed project or not? People think all sorts of stupid things.

If, at the end of the day, it does a good job, is free and helps people why does it matter?

-sv

Johnny Hughes wrote:

Not that I am complaining ... but don't you think if all the CentOS Developers sign a cla and become Fedora Extras Developers that starts many questions?

I certainly don't think that the CORE CentOS developers can do that ... maybe I am wrong. I guess it depends on the cla.

I really don't see the problem with the Fedora CLA (Contributor License Agreement). Think of it as giving you the ability to make changes upstream, rather than just report bugs upstream. Changes (usually) must be made to packages in Fedora before they go into RHEL as you well know.

Someone said their company wouldn't let them sign it even - I don't understand how a company would want you to work on open-source software, but not on Fedora - Fedora is the definition of open-source software! I didn't take the time to read the CLA when I signed it, but looking at it now: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Legal/Licenses/CLA - it looks pretty benign to me. Although the last line - 'All your base are belong to us' is a bit worrying ;-)

Seriously though, if you or your company have a problem with something in the agreement then why don't you talk to someone at Fedora about it, or have your lawyer look at it if you really think it is so sinister.

Greg

On Wed, 2007-03-07 at 00:37 +0000, Karanbir Singh wrote:

Hi Phil,

we are working on a process for contributing rpms into centos-extras.. I'd expect that process will pickup steam once c-5 is out of the door.

So have you core guys thought about how EPEL will impact extra, centosplus, kbs-extras, ...? Seems like joining that effort might be more productive than separate thrusts to port/rebuild packages that are in Fedora Extras.

Phil

Hi Phil,

Philip Ray Schaffner wrote:

On Wed, 2007-03-07 at 00:37 +0000, Karanbir Singh wrote:

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Hi Phil,

we are working on a process for contributing rpms into centos-extras.. I'd expect that process will pickup steam once c-5 is out of the door.

So have you core guys thought about how EPEL will impact extra, centosplus, kbs-extras, ...? Seems like joining that effort might be more productive than separate thrusts to port/rebuild packages that are in Fedora Extras.

EPEL is interesting and it has a lot of potential, but the fact that they only care about, build for and expect usage on RHEL tends to sort of exclude a lot of external participation in the project. So much so that a @redhat person said that the only aim they have in pushing epel is to they can go tell their customers about it!!

Added to that the overhead of needing to sign papers with Redhat and the need to become a Fedora contributor first, only further increases the bar to entry and creates really un-necessary issues for people who are unable to, for various reasons to sign such papers etc. And given the fact that Fedora packaging dynamics are drastically different from packaging on *EL, whether the general Fedora guidelines and infrastructure is even usable long term for EPEL is itself doubt.

So in effect what epel creates today is yet-another-repo. Perhaps the best repo of them all. But it is effectively, just another repo.

EPEL does not really solve the big problem, about being able to present a single repository for the EL user base ( whatever variant they might be on ). Not sure how many people are following the rpmfusion discussions that some of the fedora-unity guys have going on at the moment, but i think thats a brilliant effort, if we could stretch it to *EL, that would be a result.

The real, short to medium term, wins for CentOS and other *EL distros - is to have an infrastructure that allows packagers to maintain their spec's in whatever system / buildprocess / version control system they prefer and yet be able to expose the resulting binaries in a single repository ( or, well, a single place for the repos - split by stability and disto friendliness rather than role ). The mechanics and policy for such an effort to happen are things that need working out, but based on the conversations that took place at Fosdem this year - its achievable.

Finally, I just want to point out that this represents my personal viewpoint, and is not a 'CentOS perspective' on the issue. How and what CentOS as a project can do, should do and is able to do with EPEL is something that still needs to be worked out. But for now, epel will be just another repo, at par with anything else / everything else out there.

Which is why I think that the special interest groups that care about specific vertical markets and deployment roles should be organised. And one thing that I know definitely needs to happen, asap, is to expand on the 'involved contributors' numbers. CentOS today has a few million users out there, but the number of people actively involved is still just a few dozen at best. That needs to change, and ideas on how such a change might come about and what we are doing wrong that needs to be fixed, are *very* welcome.

- KB

PS: I am not being negative about epel, just sharing what the picture looks like from this side of the fence. I know almost all the guys who are branching for epel at this time, and I think they are all great guys with excellent packaging skills.

Matthew Miller wrote:

On Wed, Mar 07, 2007 at 04:36:52PM +0000, Karanbir Singh wrote:

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EPEL is interesting and it has a lot of potential, but the fact that they only care about, build for and expect usage on RHEL tends to sort of exclude a lot of external participation in the project. So much so that a @redhat person said that the only aim they have in pushing epel is to they can go tell their customers about it!!

I don't think this is quite fair. At the FUDCon discussion I was at, there was considerable interest in working on -- and with -- CentOS.

This is based on what was told to us at Fosdem 2007.

- KB

Rex Dieter wrote:

Karanbir Singh wrote:

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Matthew Miller wrote:

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On Wed, Mar 07, 2007 at 04:36:52PM +0000, Karanbir Singh wrote:

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EPEL is interesting and it has a lot of potential, but the fact that they only care about, build for and expect usage on RHEL tends to sort of exclude a lot of external participation in the project. So much so that a @redhat person said that the only aim they have in pushing epel is to they can go tell their customers about it!!

I don't think this is quite fair. At the FUDCon discussion I was at, there was considerable interest in working on -- and with -- CentOS.

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This is based on what was told to us at Fosdem 2007.

You were told or heard wrong. (:

We were told this in very exact terms, wasent much room for any form of interpretation. I am sure you can imagine this wasent taken very quietly. But, well, this is what we were told.

- KB

On Wed, 2007-03-07 at 17:10 +0000, Karanbir Singh wrote:

Rex Dieter wrote:

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Karanbir Singh wrote:

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Matthew Miller wrote:

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On Wed, Mar 07, 2007 at 04:36:52PM +0000, Karanbir Singh wrote:

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EPEL is interesting and it has a lot of potential, but the fact that they only care about, build for and expect usage on RHEL tends to sort of exclude a lot of external participation in the project. So much so that a @redhat person said that the only aim they have in pushing epel is to they can go tell their customers about it!!

I don't think this is quite fair. At the FUDCon discussion I was at, there was considerable interest in working on -- and with -- CentOS.

...

This is based on what was told to us at Fosdem 2007.

You were told or heard wrong. (:

We were told this in very exact terms, wasent much room for any form of interpretation. I am sure you can imagine this wasent taken very quietly. But, well, this is what we were told.

A few selected quotes from the EPEL Wiki pages:

http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/EPEL/About

Goals of the EPEL effort Make high quality packages that get developed and tested in Fedora available for RHEL and compatible derivates like CentOS of [sic] Scientific Linux. Community Perspective Many members of the Fedora community are also users/administrators of enterprise Linux distributions that are derived from Fedora, such as RHEL and CentOS. Everyone has their own reasons for promoting a particular piece of software. Fedora enterprise packages are they best way to gain users and support from enterprise Linux users.

http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/EPEL/FAQ

Are EPEL packages available only for RHEL or also for compatible derivatives? Packages are freely available and it is an explicit goal of the project to make sure they are usable for RHEL-based distributions such as CentOS or Scientific Linux.

How can I install the packages? The plan is to distribute EPEL to users of RHEL4 via a repository that can be used with up2date. CentOS and Scientific Linux both use yum, which should be able to use the same software repository and thus can be used to install EPEL packages.

I'm an Extras contributor and want to maintain my packages in EPEL, too. What do I have to do and what do you expect from me? ... For testing the packages before and after building please use RHEL if you have a license, or the freely available RHEL-based distros such as CentOS or Scientific Linux.

What's the best package to build for EPEL4? centos.karan.org rebuild a lot of FC-3 packages for CentOS 4 -- these packages and/or the FC-3 branch of Fedora Extras is a good stating point for EPEL4 packages.

Perhaps the listened to the feedback, and/or not everybody was on-message. They seem to be very welcoming of rebuild users, and even complementary of efforts like karan.org.

Phil

On 3/7/07, Greg Swallow greg@runlevel7.ca wrote:

infrastructure is even usable long term for EPEL is itself doubt.

By sign papers you mean gpg sign - I did that, it was pretty painless...You don't even need to read them ;-)

Some people's companies don't allow them to not read the papers.